The topic of ABLE (Achieving a Better Life Experience) accounts has come up recently with several client families.  Here is a quick refresher on the basics of ABLE. A person is eligible to open and use an ABLE account if her/his disability meets the Social Security definition, whether or not s/he has filed for or is receiving Social Security disability benefits and the disability started before s/he turned 46. A person can only have one ABLE account. The basic annual contribu

If you readers notice that this blog is late, I have two excuses.  Spring Break and Tax Season.  While it would be more entertaining to write about the former, I am taking a plunge and writing about the latter as it pertains to people with disabilities and some of their situations.  As a disclaimer, I am not a tax professional.  Please consult with your tax professional about your specific situation(s) before making tax decisions.   Q. Is Supplemental Security Income taxable?

Government entities create their own realities ,  governed by the rules that each has put into place.  When I first studied the IRS rules on reporting income, I was surprised to read that the IRS expects people to report and pay tax on income generated through illegal activities, such as selling drugs or stolen property.  In my mind, the word for emphasis in the previous sentence should be “illegal”, but in the collective mind of the IRS and “according to their rules”, the wo

People who are born with disabling conditions such as genetic disorders or people who are diagnosed with conditions in early childhood such as often autism spectrum disorder, generally progress through different Social Security Disability benefits as they move from one stage of life to another.  Generally, the person first becomes eligible for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) at age 18.  SSI requires no work history, but it does require an impairment or combination of impai

Government programs come with rules and rules come with forms.  The more rules, the more forms.  The forms are time consuming and may be confusing, but they are also the best way to present your situation.  There is no rule that says people who get Social Security benefits cannot work.  But those who do work have to follow specific rules and, yes, submit specific forms.   If you work, or have worked, and apply for Social Security Disability Benefits—either SSI or SSDI—you wil

After spending 90 minutes walking a client through the myriad questions on the Social Security Disability application, I and the client generally breathe a sigh of relief.  It would be nice if the application was a “one and done”, but often it is not.  Instead, submitting the initial application generates a round of follow-up forms.   One of the forms that a claimant is likely to receive as a follow-up to her/his Social Security Disability application is the SSA 3373 BK Adult

In my last two blogs, I talked about when applicants might or might not be eligible for Social Security Disability benefits.  In this one, I will talk about what happens when an applicant is not only eligible for benefits, but eligible for more than one, either concurrently or sequentially.  I will start by reviewing the different types of benefits.   Supplemental Security Income or SSI  is the disability benefit created under Title XVI  of the Social Security Act and sometim

In my last blog, I shared examples of how a person who is applying for Social Security Disability benefits—either SSI or SSDI—must demonstrate that her/his conditions are expected to be long term and are significant enough to prevent the person from performing Substantial Gainful Activity (SGA), without special conditions, such as Impairment Related Work Expenses or Employer Subsidies.   As if the duration of disability and SGA criteria were not enough, each type of disabilit

My older son is applying for postsecondary programs.  He does not have a lot of patience for administrative processes, so he requires a lot of handholding.  He figures that since he has decent grades and since he will be getting his diploma, he meets the admissions criteria.  My response is yes, but…you still have to fulfill the bureaucratic criteria.  You have to complete the application.  You (or we) have to pay the application fee.  Your school has to provide your transcri

When you have a child with a disability, you want to focus on what s/he can do.  You hope that once the child reaches early adulthood, what the child can do evolves into paid employment.  At home, you teach your child to master household tasks like doing their own laundry, loading and unloading the dishwasher, vacuuming and raking leaves, etc.  At school, starting when your child turns 14 and a half, you work with the IEP and transition team to build pre-vocational skills int

“When is a door no longer a door?  When it is ajar.”  The old children’s joke could be rewritten for Social Security Disability in this way “When is earned income no longer countable income?  When it is IRWE or Subsidy.”   In my last blog, I said that people with disabilities, who work and receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), may not want to rely on the Automatic Wage Reporting system in situations where not all of the inc

Occasionally, I have seen this idea floated around.  Since the IRS already has all our income data, what if the Service just prepared our tax returns for us and then sent them to us for review and editing?  Apparently, some European governments do this, an approach called “ready return”.  Around this time of year, when W2s and 1099s of all stripes not to mention all the lesser-used forms are starting to trickle in, the idea seems much more attractive than the annual scavenger

Last night I dreamed that I was arguing, or maybe just “debating”, with two Social Security staff.  We were sitting in a small, grey, fluorescent-lit conference room that probably looks a lot like an actual room in one of the field offices, even though I have not been in one since before the pandemic.  I asked with frustration in my voice why it was taking 15 months to get a certain SSI application through when the applicant so clearly fit the “adult listing criteria” for a s

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